Month: July 2007

the couch is here

The new couch showed up today. It’s a little bigger than the old couch, which is fine, except that it’ll be interesting trying to get it out of the apartment when I either move or throw it out (whichever comes first). It looks fine, and it’s plenty comfortable, which I guess is all I can ask for in a couch. It’s outgassing like crazy right now, though. I opened the windows up, turned the fan on, and went out for an hour or so, and that seems to have helped a bit, but I can’t leave the windows open overnight, since it’s so hot and humid right now. I’ll leave the windows open all day tomorrow, while I’m at work. Hopefully, that’ll help. Meanwhile, this page has some interesting tips on how to deal with “new sofa stink”. I’m all out of incense, alas.

out with the old (couch)

My old couch, which I’ve owned for about 15 years, is now out on the curb, awaiting tomorrow’s bulk pickup. The couch was a hand-me-down, and wasn’t in the greatest shape when the previous owner gave it to me, so it’s probably at least 20 years old.

The new couch should arrive tomorrow. This will be the first time in my life that I’ve actually bought new living-room furniture with my own money! I was originally going to get something relatively expensive, maybe from Crate & Barrel. I wound up deciding to go with something more modest: an Ashley couch from Crazy Deals, a small furniture store conveniently located right downstairs from my apartment.

more phone stuff

Okay, this is hopefully the last post on my phone for a while. (See previous posts for context.) I went out last week to find an adapter to allow me to use a normal pair of headphones with the phone, for listening to music on it. It turns out that a normal $5 Radio Shack adapter, plugged into the Motorola USB adapter, only allows sound to come through one channel. I’m not 100% sure why this is, but it’s annoying. For now, I decided to just give up, and bought a pair of Motorola headphones that plug directly into the USB jack on the phone. They cost $30 from Best Buy. The sound is pretty good, but the earbud design doesn’t fit my ears that well.

Looking around on the internet now, I think I could have just bought something like this, but I didn’t see it in either Best Buy or Radio Shack last week, so I’d probably have to mail-order it. I may still do that, though I don’t think I can return the earphones now, since I tossed all the packaging.

new monitor

My old Planar LCD monitor died this week, so I went out to Best Buy and bought a new LG monitor, a 19″ widescreen. This new monitor doesn’t have any more screen real estate than the old one, but the widescreen thing is interesting. I’m not sure I like it better than the standard aspect ratio on the old monitor.

I’m also thinking that I may not have got the color calibration quite right; I went through the whole process of setting it up, using the LG software, but it still looks a bit too pink. Maybe I’ll have to try it again. And maybe I need to look at the video card driver too, and see if anything there needs to be adjusted.

I dropped off the old monitor at the Somerset County Recycling facility today. Conveniently, it died just a few days before the monthly drop-off day. I’d never been down there to drop anything off before. It went relatively smoothly; I just had to wait in line behind a few other cars for a few minutes, then they just took the monitor out of my car and off I went. (On my way out, the line had gotten much longer, so I think I need to remember to get there before 10am, if I ever have to go back.) I was surprised at how many computers they had piled up there. I saw an old first-gen iMac, a blue & white G3 tower, and a big pile of beige/grey/black boxes of various models. I’m hope they’re doing something responsible with them, and not just burying them in a hole somewhere.